Everything you wanted to know about LEDs but were afraid to ask

The Nobel Prize in Physics just awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura for their work on blue light emitting diodes—LEDs—reveals the extent to which lighting technology has changed over the just the last four decades. Since the energy crises of the 1970s, researchers have introduced many more efficient light sources, but now all are being replaced thanks in large part to the work of these new Nobel Laureates.